I’m pretty if they could, Senate Republicans would propose a new amendment nullifying the 2008 and 2012 presidential election victories for Barack H. Obama altogether.

Ultimately, their clearly partisan, clearly obstructionist plan of blocking any nomination that Obama makes to fill recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s empty seat on the bench is a sublimation of that desire. Because as has been put to webspace many times — the Constitution doesn’t say anything about an “election year” clause in the president’s duty to name people to the Supreme Court.

Liz Warren’s said it, and we here on Modern Liberalshave made the same case — the Constitution is very plain in how this is all supposed to shake out, regardless of how Republicans feel about it. Isn’t it interesting that the group who accuses liberals of being incapable of making arguments that don’t rely only on emotion is making an emotional argument to toss out two elections’ worth of votes?

This is nothing more than a tantrum, and it won’t cost them a damn thing in solid red states, but how this plays out in states — where most people just want their government to at least function — is anyone’s guess. Some have suggested the Republicans should at least let Obama make his nomination and get it to a vote, where they can do their constitutional duty of confirming (or not) whoever is nominated. That could be a good move for them with their base, but their base can’t win them elections anymore — 2008 and 2012 proved just that fact.

If they don’t look like rational adults, they will put themselves in a position to not name the next Supreme Court successor either, because they’ll dither and dicker their way out of a 2016 win. This all could have been a nightmare they avoided if Republicans had run a rational and sane Vice Presidential candidate on the opposite of McCain, or if they could have beaten Obama the second time. But they didn’t, and even though they tried for eight long, laborious years to dig up some kind of dirt — any kind of dirt — that would nullify the elections and allow them to impeach Obama, they haven’t gotten anything of the kind accomplished.

Can you imagine what would happen if a liberal politician essentially suggested disenfranchising 134 million people for a year? That is exactly what McConnell and the Republicans who agree with him are suggesting, because over 134 million people in two different elections cast their vote in favor of Obama being the guy to replace Supreme Court justices. When we say that elections have consequences, these are the consequences we’re talking about, but none of us should probably be too surprised this is where the Republicans are going with this.

They want to have wars without consequences. They want to gut education and environmental protection programs without consequences. They want to end health care reform without consequences. And even if they acknowledge that there will be real world, tough consequences for their sycophancy, they dismiss it as being the whining of the masses; liberals brainwashed into thinking the government should do everything for them. Instead, we know the truth is we just want the government to protect our rights as they exist in the 21st century, not as they existed in the late 1700’s.

This is the party that believes Planned Parenthood are baby butchers, that Benghazi is an actual thing still, that Fast & Furious is more than just a series of plot-free action films, and that Hillary Clinton is some massive fraudulent criminal that should be behind bars because of emails that weren’t as highly classified as they are now. They live in a rich fantasy world where all that stuff is mature governance and where, apparently, there’s a clause in the constitution that says “none of this counts if one party really, really doesn’t want it to.”

Pathetic? Yes. Will it cost them anything in the election? It should, but I wouldn’t start holding my breath, just in case.